Without limiting the scope of the present invention, this background of the present invention is described in connection with management of marketing data using an event transition network. The present invention, however, is not limited to the management of marketing data. The present invention is applicable to the management of any type of data where it is desirable to implement a flexible architecture that is adaptable by changing rules rather than changing programs.
One goal of marketing is to acquire, retain and maximize relationships with customers. This goal has become increasingly more important to modern businesses as technological advances have created a global economy, reduced the time it takes to bring a product to market, and caused traditional distribution channels to shrink, as more direct communication channels with customers have emerged. As a result, businesses are attempting to clarify their understanding of a customer's brand and lifetime values while simultaneously attempting to analyze those values more quickly.
Despite significant advances in computer technology and these increasing market pressures, marketing data access and business logic are typically governed by inflexible computer systems. These systems typically have long development times and testing cycles and often rely on batch processing. As a result, the benefits from these systems have been largely tactical--the storage and analysis of large amounts of customer data. Even the newer, more advanced systems typically cannot adapt quickly to changes in the marketing needs of businesses because these systems are large, complex and proprietary in nature. As a result, these systems are generally customized for each client and may require significant recoding to implement changes in the way that the data is analyzed and used. Today's marketplace, however, demands marketing tools that have increased performance, scalability and flexibility.
More recently, in an attempt to improve flexibility and deliver more contemporary functionality, new marketing software has been implemented in a two-tiered architecture (client/server). This two-tiered software, however, still mimics the past twenty years of software development with an occasional use of a "programming bus" to separate the interface and database logic layers. Most of these software components have static rather than dynamic functionality, which means that they have difficulty accommodating emerging variations in data types and inter-process control methods. These limitations are particularly problematic in the areas of modern market research, campaign management, media planning and execution. Moreover, these software components require frequent rewrites, which makes a "whole product" solution that can evolve quickly enough to keep pace with today's rapidly expanding marketing knowledge gap virtually impossible to deliver.